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THE  RECORD 
OF  A  YEAR 


Progress  of  the  Work 
of  the  General  War- 
Time  Commission  of 
the  Churches 
1917-1918 

by 

REV.  WILLIAM  ADAMS  BROWN 


rp HE  following  report  was  presented  at  the 
"'*■  Second  Annual  Meeting  of  the  General 
War-Time  Commission  of  the  Churches 
in  Washington ,  D.  C. ,  September  24 1918 

by 

William  Adams  Brown 

Secretary  of  the  Commission 


The  Record  of  a  Year 

By 

Rev.  William  Adams  Brown 


MR.  CHAIRMAN  and  Members  of  the  Gen¬ 
eral  War-Time  Commission: 

A  year  ago,  in  New  York  City,  the  greatest 
center  of  population  in  the  country,  this  General 
War-Time  Commission  was  born.  We  meet 
today  in  Washington,  the  seat  of  the  Nation’s 
Government,  and  the  center  from  which  the 
threads  of  leadership  reach  out  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth,  to  make  report  of  the  year’s  progress.  It 
is  an  encouraging  story  that  we  have  to  tell.  In 
many  different  lines  we  can  register  distinct  prog¬ 
ress  over  a  year  ago.  The  progress  appears  in 
our  more  vivid  consciousness  of  unity,  in  our 
closer  practical  co-operation,  in  the  clearer  defini¬ 
tion  of  the  function  of  the  different  agencies  that 
are  working  together  in  the  common  task,  and, 
above  all,  in  our  enlarged  program  for  the  future. 
It  would  be  an  agreeable  task  if  time  permitted 
and  I  were  not  as  certain  as  I  am  of  the  Puritan 
conscience  of  our  Chairman,  to  pay  a  tribute  to 
the  different  influences  that  have  co-operated  in 
bringing  us  to  this  place. 

I  would  like  to  speak,  first  of  all,  of  the  attitude 
of  the  various  representatives  of  the  Government 
with  whom  we  have  had  to  do  during  the  past 
year,  and  who  have  met  us  uniformly  with  a 
courteous  sympathy  which  we  cannot  too  highly 
appreciate.  There  will  be  opportunity  as  time 
gees  on  to  refer  by  name  to  some  of  those  with¬ 
out  whom  our  work  could  not  have  been  done. 
I  should  like  to  refer  to  the  work  of  the  different 

3 


denominational  war  commissions  whose  confi¬ 
dence  and  practical  support,  given  in  increasing 
measure,  has  made  possible  whatever  has  been 
accomplished.  I  should  like  to  speak  of  the  serv¬ 
ices  of  the  officials  and  commissions  of  the 
Federal  Council,  which  brought  this  War-Time 
Commission  into  existence,  through  whose  facili¬ 
ties  alone  it  has  been  possible  for  us  to  do  what 
we  have  done  and  with  whom  we  have  been  co¬ 
operating  more  and  more  closely  throughout  the 
year.  And  what  shall  I  say  of  those  great  arms 
of  the  Church,  the  Young  Men’s  Christian  Asso¬ 
ciation  and  the  Young  Womens  Christian  Asso¬ 
ciation,  whose  expansion  through  the  year,  in 
their  far-sighted  and  many-sided  programs,  we 
have  witnessed  with  so  much  interest  and  so  much 
satisfaction?  Not  the  least  of  the  elements  of 
progress  that  we  have  to  report  is  the  constantly 
closer  relationship  into  which  we  have  entered 
with  the  leaders  of  those  organizations,  as  we 
have  taken  up  with  them  in  conference  the  many 
practical  questions  that  have  arisen  and  tried  to 
devise  the  most  effective  methods  of  work  in  and 
about  the  camps. 

I  should  like  to  speak  of  our  closer  relationship 
with  our  fellow-citizens  of  other  religious  faiths 
whom  we  have  touched  in  the  great  task  of  patri¬ 
otism,  of  that  spirit  evidenced,  for  example,  to 
take  but  a  single  instance,  by  Colonel  Cutler,  the 
Chairman  of  the  Jewish  Welfare  Board,  who  was 
the  first  to  protest  against  the  proposed  removal  of 
the  Christian  cross  from  the  insignia  of  the  Chap¬ 
lain-on  the  ground  that  it  was  the  right  and  the 
duty  of  the  Christian  people  to  express  their  re¬ 
ligious  convictions  according  to  the  symbol  which 
was  dearest  to  them. 

I  should  like  to  speak  of  the  Committee  on  the 
Churches  and  the  Moral  Aims  of  the  War,  which 

4 


independently  and  yet  in  a  most  co-operative 
spirit,  has  been  working  at  a  different  phase  of 
the  common  task,  that  committee  to  which  we  owe 
the  presence  of  the  distinguished  visitors  whom 
we  shall  hear  in  the  course  of  the  day,  who  have 
come  to  us  to  express  the  Christian  sympathy  and 
fellowship  that  bind  us  to  our  fellow  Christians 
of  Great  Britain — whose  coming  is  a  symbol  of 
the  wider  fellowship  which  will  some  day,  we  dare 
to  believe,  unite  all  Christians  in  a  world-wide 
brotherhood  of  faith  and  service. 

But  my  task  here  is  simply  to  speak  of  the 
part  that  has  been  played  in  this  many-sided 
activity  by  our  General  War-Time  Commission. 
It  will  be  possible  for  me  in  briefest  outline  to 
touch  upon  three  or  four  only  of  the  marked  evi¬ 
dences  of  progress  for  which  I  think  our  work  in 
the  War-Time  Commission  may  justly  claim  some 
small  share  of  credit. 

An  Agency  for  the  Common  Work  of  the  Churches 

First,  and  most  important  of  all,  in  the  Com¬ 
mission  there  has  been  brought  into  existence  an 
agency  through  which  the  churches  can  work 
together  without  the  sacrifice  of  principle.  It 
was  for  this  very  purpose  that  the  Commission 
was  brought  into  existence.  You  remember  the 
situation  a  year  ago.  Many  different  Christian 
agencies  were  operating  in  the  same  or  allied 
spheres  without  any  common  clearing  house.  It 
was  in  the  hope  that  we  might  create  such  a  clear¬ 
ing  house  that  the  Commission  was  appointed, 
and  I  think  that  your  presence  here  today  is  the 
best  evidence  that  that  has  been  accomplished. 

There  have  been  many  ways  in  which  the  Com¬ 
mission  has  acted  as  a  common  agency.  It  has 
acted  as  such  an  agency  in  the  acquisition  and 
dissemination  of  information.  We  have  made 

5 


surveys  of  the  camps  and  hospitals  which  have 
been  made  accessible  to  you  all.  Through  our 
service  bulletin  sent  to  the  different  commissions, 
through  the  clip-sheet  which  has  been  issued  to 
the  religious  press ;  above  all,  through  the  many- 
sided  contacts  which  it  has  brought  about  between 
individuals,  our  Commission  has  made  possible 
an  understanding  between  the  different  religious 
agencies,  which  I  think  we  may  fairly  say  would 
not  have  been  possible  in  any  other  way. 

Contribution  to  the  Religious  Life  of  the  Army 

Again,  the  existence  of  the  Commission  has 
made  it  possible  to  do  a  number  of  different 
things  which  could  not  easily  have  been  done 
otherwise,  because  there  was  nobody  else  to  do 
them.  These  things  have  been  of  all  kinds,  from 
the  erection  of  inter-denominational  buildings  in 
such  centers  as  Camp  Upton  and  Camp  Dix, 
where  there  was  no  single  body  to  handle  the 
mass  of  detail  which  was  involved,  to  devising 
a  form  of  admission  which  could  be  used  by  the 
Chaplains  in  France  for  those  men  who  wished 
to  make  a  confession  of  Christ  and  to  join  the 
Church.  Today,  through  this  form,  the  churches 
can  follow  their  men  to  France  and  in  the  person 
of  the  Chaplain,  receive  the  confession  which  he 
in  turn  transmits  to  the  home  church.  If,  in  the 
providence  of  God,  before  the  letter  carrying  the 
news  home  arrives,  the  man  who  makes  the  con¬ 
fession  should  be  called  to  join  the  great  army  on 
the  other  side,  his  name  will  be  entered  upon  the 
church  roll  as  one  who  actually  entered  the  church 
fellowship  while  serving  under  the  flag. 

A  Voice  for  the  Churches 

In  the  third  place,  the  Commission  has  acted 
as  a  common  agency  in  those  connections  in  which 
it  was  the  desire  of  the  churches  to  speak 

6 


unitedly  for  the  Church  to  the  churches  and  to 
the  Nation.  To  use  but  a  single  illustration:  In 
connection  with  the  Memorial  Day  celebration,  a 
celebration  which,  at  the  suggestion  of  our  Presi¬ 
dent,  was  given  a  religious  tone,  our  Commission 
was  the  means  of  gathering  expressions  of  loyalty 
and  patriotism  from  the  churches,  which  were 
sent  in  a  memorial  album  to  our  President,  and 
I  have  here  a  letter  which  he  wrote  in  response 
to  that  message,  a  message  that  deeply  touched  his 
heart.  May  I  read  that  letter?  It  was  addressed 
to  Dr.  Speer : 

“I  thank  you  sincerely  for  sending  me  the 
very  interesting  and  inspiring  messages  from  the 
several  churches  which  you  have  been  kind  enough 
to  have  made  accessible  to  me  in  a  binding.  If  I 
followed  my  own  impulse,  I  would  certainly  reply 
to  some  of  these  messages,  but  I  see  only  too 
clearly  that  if  I  began  I  should  begin  to  discrimi¬ 
nate  as  between  one  message  and  another  or  else 
be  obliged  to  answer  them  all,  which  would  be  out 
of  the  question.  I  must  content  myself  with  ask¬ 
ing  you  to  avail  yourself  of  any  opportunity  you 
may  have  to  say  with  what  interest  and  inspira¬ 
tion  I  have  received  them. 

Cordially  and  sincerely  yours, 

Woodrow  Wilson.” 

This  common  action  has  taken  place  without 
any  sacrifice  of  principle.  We  recognize  the  deep 
convictions  and  the  historic  traditions  which  in¬ 
spire  and  which  support  the  different  bodies  who 
have  been  working  together  in  this  War-Time 
Commission.  We  have  not  attempted  any  action 
that  would  involve  any  sacrifice  of  conviction  on 
the  part  of  any  who  have  co-operated  with 
us,  but  we  have  believed,  and  we  have  been  glad 
to  find  our  belief  confirmed  by  experience,  that 
there  was  a  great  body  of  common  Christian 
conviction  on  the  basis  of  which  we  could  work. 

7 


The  Work  for  Chaplains 

In  the  second  place,  we  have  done  something 
to  promote  the  religious  welfare  of  our  Army  and 
our  Navy  through  our  work  for  our  Chaplains, 
regular  and  voluntary.  This  matter  will  be 
brought  before  you  so  fully  by  those  following 
me  that  I  will  spend  but  a  single  moment  upon 
it.  But  I  do  want  to  say  with  the  utmost  force 
of  conviction  that  there  is  no  one  of  all  the 
interests  committed  to  us  which  has  engaged  more 
of  our  time,  our  thought,  our  effort  and  our  deep 
conviction.  Here  in  Washington  you  know  what 
has  been  done  through  the  General  Committee  on 
Army  and  Navy  Chaplains,  which  is  the  agency 
with  which  the  Government  deals  in  the  selection 
and  appointment  of  Protestant  Chaplains.  We 
have  endeavored  to  reinforce  and  strengthen  the 
work  of  that  office  and  in  addition,  we,  in  New 
York,  have  had  not  a  little  to  do  through  the 
Chaplains’  Equipment  Bureau,  which,  acting  on 
behalf  of  the  different  cooperating  bodies, 
furnishes  needed  equipment  to  the  Chaplains  as 
they  pass  through  the  city  en  route  for  their  port 
of  debarkation  and  the  front. 

More  important  than  any  specific  thing  we 
have  been  able  to  do  for  the  Chaplains  is  the  ef¬ 
fort  we  have  made  to  put  them  in  their  proper 
place  in  the  consciousness  of  the  Army  and  of 
the  Nation.  We  have  not  succeeded  in  doing 
everything  that  we  wanted  to ;  we  have  not  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  doing  all  that  ought  to  be  done ;  we 
have  not  succeeded  in  doing  all  that  will  be  done. 
There  are  some  of  our  friends  who  appear  to 
believe  the  General  War-Time  Commission  is  a 
more  powerful  agency  than  perhaps  it  is  and 
they  have  wondered  that  we  have  not  accom¬ 
plished  more ;  but  when  one  looks  back  and  com¬ 
pares  the  situation  a  year  ago  with  what  we  see 

8 


now,  and  looks  at  things  in  the  large  perspective, 

I  think  we  have  every  reason  to  thank  God  and 
take  courage.  Then  the  Chaplain  was  a  regi¬ 
mental  officer  pure  and  simple,  without  any  con¬ 
tact  with  the  Church,  without  any  recognized 
place  in  the  large  program  of  Christian  service 
which  was  being  outlined  by  the  great  volun¬ 
tary  agencies  that  fill  the  public  consciousness. 
The  Chaplains  were  few  in  number.  They  had 
no  equipment,  no  proper  training,  no  organiza¬ 
tion  and  no  clearly  defined  status.  At  every  one 
of  these  points  we  note  progress.  The  number 
of  the  Chaplains  has  been  largely  increased 
through  the  passage  of  the  bill  providing  for  one 
Chaplain  for  every  twelve  hundred  men.  The 
responsibility  of  the  Government  for  the  equip¬ 
ment  of  the  Chaplain  has  been  conceded  in  prin¬ 
ciple.  Provision  has  been  made  for  the  training 
of  Chaplains  through  the  training  school  at 
Camp  Zachary  Taylor.  The  status  of  the  Chap¬ 
lain  as  a  spiritual  officer  has  been  more  clearly 
defined  and  safeguarded.  In  France  notable 
progress  has  been  made  through  the  organization 
of  the  Chaplains  under  Bishop  Brent  and  his 
associates  into  a  compact  and  efficient  working 
body.  Above  all,  the  principle  has  been  recog¬ 
nized  by  the  Government  and  by  the  churches 
that  the  Chaplain  is  the  responsible  leader  of  the 
religious  forces  of  the  Army  and  of  the  Navy. 

Two  points  that  will  be  touched  upon  by  those 
who  come  after  me  are  the  organization  of  the 
Chaplains  in  this  country  and  provision  for  a 
proper  rank  commensurate  with  the  dignity  of 
their  office  and  the  importance  of  their  service.  On 
the  last  point  I  want  to  say  only  this  single  word. 
While  we  appreciate  the  reasons  that  have  led 
some  to  believe  that  it  would  be  wiser  to  remove 
the  Chaplain’s  rank  and  let  him  serve  as  a  purely 

9 


spiritual  officer,  we  believe  that  so  long  as  he 
remains  an  officer  of  the  Army,  he  ought  to  be 
put  in  a  position  where  he  stands  on  a  par  with 
the  men  who  serve  in  the  other  arms  of  the 
service. 

Voluntary  Chaplains  or  Camp  Pastors 

Of  the  work  done  by  the  voluntary  Chaplains 
or  camp  pastors,  I  cannot  speak  here.  It  has 
occupied  a  large  part  of  our  time  and  no  small 
share  of  our  effort.  In  many  different  ways  we 
have  tried  to  serve  these  voluntary  Chaplains. 
We  have  held  conferences  which  have  brought 
together  groups  in  different  cities ;  we  have 
written  letters  sharing  with  them  the  experience 
which  has  come  to  us  of  the  possible  ways  of 
most  effective  service ;  we  have  prepared  a  brief 
for  the  Government  setting  forth  in  the  fullest 
way  the  services  which  they  have  rendered ;  and 
only  yesterday  a  conference  was  held  with  the 
War  Department  in  order  to  discuss  the  ways  and 
means  in  which  their  services  might  be  preserved 
in  a  new  and  more  effective  way  during  the 
coming  year. 

In  connection  with  this  matter  of  the  voluntary 
Chaplain,  a  large  question  has  emerged  upon 
which  I  cannot  enter  here,  a  question  of  the  effec¬ 
tive  mobilization  of  the  voluntary  religious  forces 
of  the  Nation.  We  see  today  the  country’s  man¬ 
hood  drafted  and  assigned  for  war  service  on  a 
nation-wide  scale,  and  we  cannot  believe  the 
Christian  Church  will  fulfill  its  function  in  this 
great  war  adequately  until  we  devise  some 
method  by  which  we  may  survey  the  religious  task 
of  the  churches  on  a  scale  as  comprehensive.  Why 
should  not  the  ministry  like  the  rest  of  the  Na¬ 
tion’s  manhood,  morally  at  least,  be  drafted  into 
the  service  and  assigned,  each  man  in  the  light 

10 


ot  his  peculiar  gifts  and  fitness,  to  some  task  to 
be  administered  on  behalf  of  the  Church  as  a 
whole  ? 

The  Moral  Tone  of  the  Nation 

The  third  of  the  points  in  which  we  can  register 
progress  is  the  work  of  the  Commission  in  pro¬ 
viding  an  agency  to  reinforce  the  efforts  of  the 
Government  in  its  attempt  to  promote  the  moral 
welfare  of  the  Army,  and  so  of  the  whole  Nation. 
I  would  like  here  to  pay,  as  no  doubt  those  who 
follow  me  will  pay  in  fullest  measure  the 
tribute  we  owe  to  the  Government  for  its  stand 
in  this  great  matter.  Never  before,  I  believe,  in 
the  history  of  the  world  has  a  War  Department 
entered  upon  a  great  war  with  such  a  moral  ideal 
as  has  inspired  those  who  have  directed  our 
American  Army.  It  was  my  privilege  to  speak 
recently  with  a  distinguished  French  clergyman 
who  had  visited  this  country,  and  his  testimony  as 
to  what  it  meant  to  his  country  to  have  in  its 
midst  an  army  that  stood  for  the  kind  of  ideals 
for  which  our  Army  has  tried  to  stand,  I  wish 
I  could  rehearse  in  his  own  words.  He  said, 
“These  young  men  are  ambassadors  to  interpret 
to  us  the  genius  of  your  Christianity,  and  the 
more  you  send,  the  better.” 

You  will  have  brought  before  you  in  due  time 
what  the  Commission  has  tried  to  do  to  reinforce 
the  Government  in  this  great  task.  I  will  only 
say  that  as  we  have  been  coming  more  closely 
to  face  the  problems  which  this  attempt  raises, 
our  thought  has  necessarily  been  led  beyond  the 
Army  to  the  Nation  from  which  the  Army  comes. 
As  General  Pershing  said  in  a  letter  which  will 
doubtless  be  brought  before  you  at  the  proper 
time,  “After  all,  it  is  a  common  fight — yours 
there  and  ours  here.  What  is  necessary  for  the 
manhood  of  the  soldier  is  necessary  for  the  man- 

11 


hood  of  the  civilian.”  And  it  is  for  us  to  devise 
a  way  in  which  the  ideal  which  we  have  set  for 
our  Army  and  our  Navy  may  be  carried  over  and 
made  effective  in  the  life  of  the  Nation  as  a  whole. 

A  Program  for  the  Future 

This  matter  of  the  moral  tone  of  the  Nation 
is  but  one  of  a  group  of  larger  questions  which 
the  year’s  experience  has  brought  to  light.  I 
shall  have  time  to  hint  at  them  only  as  I  touch 
for  a  moment  on  the  last  of  the  four  points, 
namely,  the  service  of  the  Commission  in  out¬ 
lining  the  program  through  which  the  Church  can 
approach,  unitedly  and  constructively,  the  solu¬ 
tion  of  the  new  problems  which  the  war  has 
revealed.  These  new  problems  center  in  the 
great  industrial  communities  which  the  war  has 
brought  into  being — in  our  munition  factories, 
our  shipbuilding  plants,  the  great  centers  of  in¬ 
dustry  which  in  so  many  different  fields  are  co¬ 
operating  with  the  Government  in  the  gigantic 
task  of  supplying  the  sinews  of  war.  Here  is  a 
field  all  but  untouched,  but  a  field  which  the 
Christian  forces  must  enter.  I  am  glad  here  to 
bear  my  testimony  to  the  wise  and  far-sighted 
plans  which  are  being  made  by  the  Young  Men’s 
Christian  Association  and  the  Young  Womens 
Christian  Association  to  do  for  the  men  and 
women  in  our  industrial  centers  the  same 
kind  of  thing  which  they  have  so  well  done  for 
the  men  in  camp.  But  we  feel  that  however 
much  they  may  do,  there  is  a  sphere  that  belongs 
to  the  organized  Church  that  no  one  else  can  fill. 

There  are  two  possibilities  before  us.  We  may 
approach  our  problem  in  an  opportunistic  way, 
taking  it  piecemeal  and  letting  each  body  try  to 
handle  its  share  independently,  as  we  did  in  the 
case  of  the  cantonments;  or  we  may  attack  it 

12 


together  as  parts  of  one  great  organized  body 
representing  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ. 

We  propose  to  do  the  latter  and  for  this  pur¬ 
pose  have  created  the  Joint  Committee  on  War 
Production  Communities.  This  is  a  committee  of 
sixteen  persons  composed  in  part  of  representa¬ 
tives  of  the  Home  Missions  Council,  a  body 
which  brings  together  the  great  Home  Boards ;  in 
part  of  representatives  of  the  Council  of  Women 
for  Home  Missions,  which  represents  the  different 
agencies  of  women  engaged  in  Home  Missions 
work;  and  in  part  of  the  General  War-Time 
Commission,  acting  through  the  Commission  on 
the  Church  and  Social  Service.  This  Commis¬ 
sion  has  mapped  out  a  program  for  a  united 
approach  to  the  industrial  center  and  has  secured 
the  support  of  the  chief  co-operating  agencies, 
including  the  Young  Men’s  and  the  Young 
Womens  Christian  Associations. 

A  Task  for  All  the  Churches 

This  program  will  be  laid  before  you  in  detail 
today.  It  requires  for  its  full  and  successful 
operation  the  co-operation  of  the  churches  on 
a  scale  far  greater  and  far  more  concerted  than 
ever  before.  We  shall  bring  before  you  a  pro¬ 
posal  for  a  joint  campaign  on  the  part  of  the 
organized  Protestant  churches,  properly  defined 
and  related  to  the  other  campaigns  that  are  being 
planned  by  other  bodies,  which  will  explain  the 
special  work  which  the  Christian  churches  are 
asked  to  do,  and  which,  if  successful,  will  gene¬ 
rate  the  power  which  will  make  possible  a  long 
step  forward  towards  larger  and  better  things  in 
the  future. 

Mr.  Chairman,  may  I  say  this  only  in  closing? 
While  I  have  confined  what  I  have  said  to  matters 
which  have  come  directly  within  the  purview  of 

13 


our  War-Time  Commission  in  reference  to  its 
more  immediate  tasks,  and  while  I  have  left  many 
other  things  of  supreme  importance  untouched, 
as  for  example,  the  work  done  by  our  committee 
on  negro  troops,  which  has  made  an  intensive 
study  of  conditions  affecting  this  important  sec¬ 
tion  of  our  people,  a  study  which  has  already 
begun  to  bear  fruit,  or  the  work  of  the  Committee 
on  Recruiting  and  Training  for  the  Work  of  the 
Churches  at  Home  and  Abroad,  while,  I  repeat, 
we  have  been  concerned  primarily  with  these 
detailed  tasks,  our  thoughts  have  ever  been  turn¬ 
ing  forward  to  those  larger  problems  of  recon¬ 
struction  in  the  Nation,  in  the  Church  and  in  the 
world  at  large  for  which  alone  this  war  is  being 
fought,  and  through  the  successful  solution  of 
which  alone  we  can  achieve  our  fullest  measure 
of  victory.  How  these  problems  are  to  be  at¬ 
tacked,  and  through  what  agencies,  we  shall  con¬ 
sider  at  a  later  time;  but  it  has  been  our  convic¬ 
tion  that  the  most  practical  preparation  which  we 
can  make  for  taking  part  unitedly  in  these  larger 
tasks  is  to  work  together  intelligently,  unselfishly 
and  with  unstinted  devotion  at  those  immediate 
duties  which  the  providence  of  God  seems  to  be 
laying  at  our  door. 

I  want  in  closing  to  pay  my  word  of  tribute  to 
the  many  whose  helpful  co-operation  given  in 
unstinted  measure  has  made  the  work  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Commission  easy,  and  not  least  to 
the  members  of  the  staff  of  whose  devotion  and 
unselfishness  I  cannot  speak  too  highly.  Above 
all,  I  want  to  voice  our  thanksgiving  to  Almighty 
God  for  the  best  gift  of  the  year,  that  ever  deep¬ 
ening  and  more  vivid  consciousness  of  a  unity 
of  the  Spirit  that  has  become  to  some  of  us 
just  as  certain  a  fact  as  the  things  our  eyes  can 
see.  I  recall  one  meeting  some  months  ago,  when 

14 


a  group  of  our  camp  pastors  met  for  conference 
about  the  practical  tasks  of  the  Christian  Church. 
We  sat  from  morning  until  long  into  the  after¬ 
noon,  when  suddenly  a  suggestion  was  made  that 
we  stop  our  discussion  of  details  for  a  moment 
and  lift  our  thoughts  to  our  main  objective,  the 
common  purpose  and  the  common  faith  for  the 
sake  of  which  we  had  come  together.  We  were 
men  of  many  communions,  of  many  antecedents, 
of  many  creeds,  but  as  we  spent  that  short  half- 
hour  in  contemplation  of  the  eternal  realities  of 
the  Spirit  for  the  sake  of  which  all  these  other 
things  were  being  done,  we  were  conscious  that 
we  were  in  truth  one.  We  spoke  of  the  love  of 
God  as  made  manifest  in  the  person  of  our  Lord 
and  Saviour,  Jesus  Christ,  of  His  sacrifice  on 
Calvary,  of  the  dignity  of  the  individual  soul 
called  to  fellowship  with  Christ,  of  the  righteous¬ 
ness  of  God  and  the  need  of  repentance,  of  the 
transforming  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  of  the 
authority  and  responsibility  of  the  Christian 
Church.  And,  as  our  minds  and  hearts  were 
drawn  together  in  the  contemplation  of  these 
great  things,  our  differences  were  forgotten,  not 
because  we  had  sacrificed  anything  that  was 
precious,  but  because  we  had  reached  down  to 
those  deeper  depths  in  which  our  spirits  touched 
the  spirits  of  our  fellow  Christians  in  adoration 
of  that  which  was  most  sacred  and  precious  to 
us  both.  We  believe  that  such  a  meeting  as  this, 
that  the  many  meetings  like  this  that  are  being 
held  all  over  this  great  country  throughout  the 
past  year,  will  lead  us  out  into  the  larger  unity 
which  alone  will  make  it  possible  for  the  Church 
to  fulfill  its  highest  mission.  With  that  thought 
and  in  that  faith  we  go  forward  hopefully  into 
the  work  of  the  new  year. 


15 


GENERAL  WAR-TIME 
COMMISSION  OF  THE  CHURCHES 

105  East  22nd  Street 
New  York  City 

Washington  office  at 

937  Woodward  Building,  Washington,  D.  C. 


Officers  of  the 
Commission 

Robert  E.  Speer, 

Chairman 

Rt.  Rev  William  Lawrence, 
Vice-Chairman 


Rev.  William  Adams  Brown, 
Secretary 

Rev.  Gaylord  S.  White, 
Associate  Secretary 

Rev.  W.  Stuart  Cramer, 

Rev.  Jasper  T.  Moses, 
Harold  H.  Tryon, 

Assistant  Secretaries 

Margaret  Renton, 

Office  Secretary 


Officers  of  the 
Federal  Council  of  the 
Churches  of  Christ 
in  America 

Rev.  Frank  Mason  North, 
President 

Alfred  R.  Kimball,  Treasurer 

Rev.  Charles  S.  Macfarland, 
General  Secretary 

Rev.  Worth  M.  Tippy, 

Rev.  Henry  A.  Atkinson, 

Rev.  Edmund  deS.  Brunner 
Rev.  Charles  L.  Goodell, 

Rev.  Roy  B.  Guild, 

Rev.  Sidney  L.  Gulick, 
Secretaries 

Rev.  Eddison  Mosiman, 
Assistant  to  the  General 
Secretary 


Executive  Committee  of  the  Commission 


Rev.  Alfred  Williams  Anthony 

Rev.  Henry  A.  Atkinson 

President  Clarence  A.  Barbour 

Rev.  Samuel  Z.  Batten 

Rev.  Edgar  Blake 

E.  M.  Bowman 

Rev.  J.  F.  Carson 

Rev.  W.  I.  Chamberlain 

Rev.  F.  G.  Coffin 

Rev.  W.  Stuart  Cramer 

Miss  Mabel  Cratty 

Rev.  Lyman  E.  Davis 

Rev.  D.  D.  Forsyth 

John  M.  Glenn 

Rev.  B.  D.  Gray 

Rev.  Howard  B.  Grose 

William  A.  Harbison 

Rev.  William  I.  Haven 

Professor  J.  R.  Hawkins 

Bishop  Theodore  S.  Henderson 


George  Innes 

Lt.  Col.  Walter  F.  Jenkins 

Alfred  R.  Kimball 

Pres.  Henry  Churchill  King 

Rev.  F.  H.  Knubel 

Bishop  Walter  R.  Lambuth 

Rev.  Albert  G.  Lawson 

Pres.  Wm.  Douglas  Mackenzie 

Bishop  William  F.  McDowell 

John  R.  Mott 

Rev.  R.  Niebuhr 

Rt.  Rev.  Theodore  I.  Reese 

Rev.  H.  Franklin  Schlegel 

Fred  B.  Smith 

James  M.  Speers 

President  J.  Ross  Stevenson 

Rev.  Paul  Moore  Strayer 

Bishop  Wilbur  P.  Thirkield 

Wilbur  K.  Thomas 

Rev.  James  I.  Vance 


2500  2.1.19 


